Genre theory has been promoted lately as a new basis for the teaching of composition, even by older scholars such as Art Young and David Bleich. Indeed, several new books on genre and composition teaching have appeared in the last decade (e.g., Berkenkotter and Huckin; Cope and Kalantzsis; Bishop; Bishop and Ostrom; Freedman and Medway), and the term "genre" appears often these days in articles on the teaching of writing. Genre theory, following in the wake of theoretical work over the last century (e.g., Bakhtin; Bazerman; Miller; Swales), assumes that genres surround us--that all discourse acts take place in genres. Genre theory includes work in discourse itself but also work centering on how genres are acquired ("genre acquisition theory"), an area of scholarship whose works derive from ESL and child language studies.

However, many contemporary scholars seem to assume that the principles of genre and its acquisition are entirely new in American composition teaching. For instance, when Carl Lovitt and Art Young tell readers that it is time to "reexamine prevailing conceptions of first-year composition with the intent of suggesting . . . a genre-based model . . . " (113), they clearly aren't planning to draw upon anything that has gone before in American composition pedagogy. To her credit, Amy Devitt admits that genre theory owes a great debt to classical rhetoric, but she fails to show how what she is promoting has anything at all to do with the traditions of composition pedagogy in our own past ("Generalizing").

Historians of composition pedagogy have concluded that American composition teaching had an early, though not substantive, history of genre pedagogy. For example, Albert Kitzhaber notes that there had been genre classifications of "literary forms" used by rhetorics in preceding centuries such as the "epistle, romance, treatise, dialog, history, . . . and various poetic forms . . . " (19), but that this view--and the pedagogy that accompanied it--"persisted for a time after 1850 but soon died out" (119). Similarly, Robert Connors has found a nineteenth century pedagogy that included "journalistic [genres] such as reviews . . . editorials and . . . letters, treatises, essays, biographies, and fiction" (217). However, Connors goes on to say that this early genre emphasis did not last because it was too theoretical, "not essentially pedagogical in nature" (217). Similarly, Carolyn Miller and David Jolliffe argue that the "great admiration for everything scientific" in American culture after the Civil War meant that the genre pedagogy that Kitzhaber and Connors speak of was short-lived, driven out by the "empiricist, scientific, and functional" motivations of current traditional writing programs (377).

However, in light of the rising popularity of genre pedagogy today, the early American genre pedagogy that did exist in the nineteenth century needs to be explored further. Derived as it was (somewhat distantly) from the progymnasmata of Roman and medieval rhetoric and (more directly) from chapters 36 and 37 of Hugh Blair's Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, this early American genre pedagogy represents the first stage in the development of a paradigm for teaching genre in our composition tradition. It may (or may not) be true that this paradigm never got much of a foothold in American universities, though we can see it in G.P.Quackenbos' Advanced Course of Composition and Rhetoric (1873), in Albert Baugh, Joseph Kitchen, and Matthew Black's popular Writing By Types (1924), and later in Gene Krupa's Situational Writing (1982). The genre paradigm exists today in composition course books such as Devitt's Scenes of Writing, John Trimbur's The Call to Write, Jolliffe's Inquiry and Genre, and texts for scientific, business, and technical writing classes.

It seems to me that the best view we can get this first American genre teaching paradigm is by looking into John S. Hart's Rhetoric and Composition: A Text-book for Schools and Colleges (1870). Hart's book, a popular seller during the last half of the nineteenth century, is by most standards a current traditional text. In fact, Sharon Crowley describes the book's mechanistic approach to invention and its fixation with style (75-76). Along these same lines, Connors accords the book the dubious honor of being among the first--perhaps the very first--to include the "what-I-did-on-my-summer-vacation" writing prompt (310-11). Nevertheless, Hart is the first American text writer to give much prominence in his book to rhetorical genres; in fact, it seems to me that Hart's book represents an important beginning point in genre instruction in American college composition. Of course, as noted earlier, genres had been taught before Hart, particularly in classes that used Blair's Lectures and also in eighteenth century rhetoric classes where the genres of classical rhetoric were central. However, Hart is the first to assemble a pedagogy of written genres, which he calls the "varieties of prose composition." The ones he treats in his book are, for Hart, the "chief varieties of prose composition": letters, diaries, news editorials, book reviews, essays, treatises, travel books, history (historical analyses, annals, memoirs, biographies, autobiographies), and fiction. He also includes a section on what he refers to broadly as "discourses" (taking the term here directly from Blair), by which he means oral genres (which may or may not be written): orations, addresses, sermons, lectures, and speeches.

We see in Hart's book many questions that contemporary genre pedagogy has yet to come to grips with. In other words, in my judgment the conversation about using genres as the framework for writing courses often has overlooked some very fundamental questions. Therefore, it seems to me that examining part of our pedagogical ancestry as I do in this paper is a way to explore some of these basics--to look at what Hart does that is sound (by today's theoretical standards) and what is not.

Genres and "Fundamental Principles of Good Writing."

From the organization of his book, it is clear that Hart assumes that the developing writer must master--in the abstract--the principles of "good writing" and then later apply those principles to actual genres. That is, consistent with its current traditional heritage, the book is organized on a particle syllabus--a deductive syllabus--beginning with punctuation (chapter one), moving through diction (chapter 2), sentences (chapter 3), figures (chapter 4), "special properties" of sublimity, beauty, wit, and humor (chapter 5). Then, much later in the book (in the middle of his presentation on the genre of the letter in chapter 8), Hart directly lays out his assumption about how writers acquire discourse: "general principles . . . which underlie all composition, must guide the writer in the composition of the body or substance of a letter" (274) and, we assume, other genres as well. Here, in other words, Hart is referring to all of those principles of good composition which he had labored to identify through the first two-thirds of his book. In Hart's genre pedagogy, the writer must master these principles first before going on to apply them to actual rhetorical contexts and the genres that take place in them. It is interesting, too, that Hart considers invention to be a principle that follows genres rather than precedes them; i.e., one needs to master genres before learning about invention.

However, though some debate lingers today, there really isn't much to say in defense of Hart's notion that certain principles cover all good writing no matter the genre. Instead, the norms for "good writing" reside in whatever genre the writer is in at the moment. Furthermore, the principles that govern success in any given genre can't be learned like Hart presents them, as context-less principles outside the circumstances of genre. Rather, as Aviva Freedman has argued, because all genres are contextual, so too is all genre acquisition. We learn genres situation-by-situation, one text at a time, one attempt at a time. Over time, then, we accumulate enough abilities to navigate our way through any new occasions of that genre that we might encounter. In short, to accommodate the ways that humans acquire genres, Hart's book should be reversed, structured inductively: writers acquire the principles of good writing by working their way through experiences with different genres. They learn about invention in the context of each genre rather than mastering a set of inventional techniques outside the bounds of genres.

The Pedagogy of "Depicting" a Genre.

Another of most obvious theoretical assumptions guiding Hart's genre pedagogy involves the area "genre depiction" (Popken "The Pedagogical"): i.e., that students learn to write a genre by reading descriptions of that genre. Though he doesn't do so consistently in all the genres he presents in Rhetoric and Composition, in some cases Hart attempts to depict the rhetorical situation in which the genre is typically used. For instance, in depicting the diary for his readers, Hart says that this genre exists so that "some years hence, when memory begins to fail, he may see exactly what to-day's thoughts or experiences were" (283). Or, in the case of the memoir, Hart identifies the genre's particularly intriguing "double character" shaped by two very different contexts: "[Memoirs] are usually very entertaining to be read by themselves, and they furnish to the regular historian one of his most valuable storehouses of materials" (298). Another example: newspaper articles, according to Hart, are a genre born out of the contextual need for information delivered rapidly: "writers have no time to correct and prune their composition as other writers have" (285); thus, readers, who are more lenient than they might be reading other genres, do not hold writers of news articles "to as strict an account as other writers are, for general accuracy of diction and style" (285).

Hart's theoretical ideas about the relationship between genres on their rhetorical circumstances are certainly sound. Consider, for instance, his depiction of the way that the genre of the letter "grow[s] out of the actual occasions of life . . . " (274). Here Hart, recognizing the ways that genres emerge from social engagement among humans, sounds much like Bakhtin, who over eighty years later, points to the ways that "language enters life through concrete utterances [genres]" (947). For that matter, Hart also sounds a good deal like Lloyd Bitzer, whose often-quoted 1968 article influenced both Miller and Devitt's ideas about how genres operate. For Bitzer, the rhetorical situation invites human linguistic response which, in turn, can become regularized as genre.

However, Hart's genre depictions also move outside the realm of context and into the formal and even the non-formal features of genre. For instance, in depicting the letter, Hart shows formats that it typically has (275-82). In depicting the review, Hart shows its characteristic subject matter (288). The editorial, he says, has a notable characteristic in its persona: in order to write an editorial, the writer "conceives himself as one set to teach. His business is to give his opinions, and that of the express purpose of influencing the opinions of others" (288). The genre of the treatise has the feature of needing to be comprehensive in its coverage of a topic, and its style is "usually plain in style rarely admitting of any kind of figure of speech, or rhetorical ornament" (292). Borrowing from Blair, Hart depicts historical articles as having "gravity and dignity" (294) and containing facts that are "momentous and important" (294). Unfortunately, Hart's depictions (especially when he borrows long passages from Blair) often degenerate into prescriptivism; the historical article, for instance, "should avoid all quaintness and affection," and it "should discover sentiments of respect for virtue and an indignation at flagrant vice." It should also never be "dull" (296), but it should have "clearness, order, and due connection" (295).

Unfortunately, the entire area of genre depiction carries with it some nagging theoretical and pedagogical questions. For instance, although Hart's presentations might have seemed to readers as a comprehensive portrait of each genre, of course they are only his interpretations. After all, how accurately can any one person depict a genre's context or its properties? Unfortunately, discourse analysis has not provided us (and it may never provide us) with the theoretical tools with which to depict genres fully. In fact, even as sophisticated as it appears to be, discourse analysis has taken us only a little ways beyond the dark ages in understanding genres and the texts representing them.

Thus, when Hart, depicting the editorial, tells us that the writer's purpose "is to give his opinions . . . for the express purpose of influencing the opinions of others" (288), he operates at such a high level of generality that he really isn't telling a developing writer anything helpful. While the illocutionary speech act giving opinions appears in editorials, it isn't exclusive to editorials--humans give opinions to influence others in hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of other genres. And, a developing writer may be capable of influencing the opinions of others and still not really have a grasp on the genre of the editorial; after all, it is the exact nuances of coding the giving opinions illocution that really distinguish this genre from others. And, because he doesn't deal with the editorial in much depth (and probably doesn't understand these exact nuances of coding), Hart ends up giving his readers only a very slight (and perhaps misleading) glimpse of what it is really like.

Depicting Genres in Terms of Other Genres.

On the other hand, an especially unique part of Hart's pedagogy is the way he depicts genres in terms of other genres. In other words, he assumes that readers of his book will be able to understand new genres better if they perceive them in relation to genres they have already been introduced to, even if that introduction had come only a few pages earlier in his book. In fact, Hart accomplishes this aim by building his entire chapter on a gradual set of interrelated depictions: one genre is compared or contrasted to the next, which, in turn, is compared or contrasted to an earlier one.

For instance, after first depicting the homely genres of the letter and the diary, Hart jumps into the genre of the news story since "[n]ext to writing letters, there is, in modern times, no species of composition of which so much is done as News writing" (284). Then, after presenting the news story, Hart moves to editorials, which depicts in contrast to news stories. Whereas the former "simply records the facts of the day . . . the other discusses those facts, and expresses opinions about them, commending or condemning, explaining or defending, persuading and exhorting, assigning causes and suggesting remedies" (288). On the other hand, Hart also contrasts the editorial to two other genres, the essay and the dissertation. In contrast to the latter two, the editorial is "not a mere tissue of abstract, impersonal truths." Instead, it "comes to us permeated, through and through, with the personality of the writer" whose persona comes to be "an unseen oracle who sits veiled behind the mysterious 'we' and who puts himself forth as a public teacher and guide" (287). The review, on the other hand, is similar to the editorial "only much more extended" (288)--in fact, it "is a very long editorial" (288). In turn, the essay is different from the review. Whereas a latter "expresses the opinions of some acknowledged representative organ . . . ," an essay "stands solely on its own merits. It is in form entirely impersonal, or if the author introduces himself at all, it is in the singular, 'I,' not the editorial 'we'" (291). And on the chapter goes: The biography is sort of like a historical article but different in some ways (298). The memoir is like the biography (298). The autobiography is like but different from the biography (298). The treatise is like the essay but it also differs in important ways (292). Travel books are like diaries (293), and annals are like histories though inferior (297).

This aspect of Hart's genre depiction is theoretically sound and far ahead of its time. Hart's depiction of one genre in terms of others predates by better than a century Bahktin's intertextual notions about genres, and it is also validated by scholarship which suggests that the genre acquisition process is fundamentally intertextual: that writers always acquire a new genre against the backdrop of past ones. For instance, a study by Tamara Lucas explores ways that students had ease or difficulty acquiring a new genre (specifically the genre of the personal journal entry) depending on their own personal genre experiences from the past. In fact, some of my own research ("Genre Transfer"; "A Study of Genre Repertoires; "Adult Writers") as well as work by Roz Ivanic speculates on ways that writers sort of mix and match, taking genres from their past "repertoires" and using them as a point of departure for learning new genres. Thus, what Hart does seems to provide an entryway for developing writers into unfamiliar genres by relating to the familiar (even if that "familiar" is only something they read about a few pages earlier).

Conclusion.

As I noted at the outset of this paper, genre pedagogy has by no means settled into a universally accepted paradigm, though Hart relies on one in his book. In fact, there are a good many questions that challenge whether Hart's theoretical assumptions square with what would work in actual pedagogical practice. As noted above, Hart assumes that writers can understand contexts and properties of a genre by reading about them. But does it really work this way? Is it actually possible--as Hart assumes it is--to stand back away from a genre, to look at it, to comprehend its context and its properties, and then to learn how to produce it? Drawing on European theories of situated cognition (Lave and Wenger), Freedman and her research colleagues (Freedman; Freedman and Adam; Freedman, Adam, and Smart) have argued that it is not. Instead, they suggest that writers must be immersed in the context of a genre actually to understand it well enough to be able to acquire and produce it. Of course, Hart's book doesn't actually place writers in the contexts of the genres he teaches them; though they might easily go home and produce a diary or a letter, they aren't really in situations where producing a real travel book, memoir, or treatise. Freedman's impression is that, without the actual context, all that such decontextual pedagogy can result in is instruction in form.

Indeed, what Freedman is saying calls into question a good bit of Hart's genre pedagogy. But it also points to the instability of genre pedagogy. We simply haven't had enough dialogue on how genre theory (which has been most interesting to scholars) and genre acquisition theory can actually be translated into classroom practices. What we need, then, is more discussion about some of the issues that Hart's pedagogy raises: course contents, syllabi, and genre depiction. I hope that my efforts can begin such a conversation.

Works Cited.
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Notes